


For Keeps

by Jo (jmathieson)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: First Kiss, Fix-It, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 13:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmathieson/pseuds/Jo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint had run as far and as fast as he could, but hadn't been able to outrun his memories, or his guilt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Keeps

Clint woke up knowing there was someone in his hotel room. There were two people in the world who could get into a room without waking Clint up in the process, and one of them was dead, so without opening his eyes he said,

"You said you wouldn't come after me, Tasha."

"She didn't," said the dead man. Clint still didn't open his eyes, but his hand clasped around the grip of the gun under his pillow. He heard the fabric of Phil Coulson's jacket whisper as he put his hand on his sidearm in reply.

"We're not really going to point guns at each other, are we Clint?"

Coulson, and it was Coulson, Clint was completely sure of that now, sounded tired, and in pain, and a little bit... not scared... not quite, not nervous... anxious. Clint didn't want to think about how he could tell that much just from the man's voice, even if it was the voice that had talked him through over a hundred missions, the voice he knew as well as his own. Coulson was standing in his hotel room, by the wall to the left of the door, with his hand on his gun, tired, in pain, and anxious. Part of Clint wanted to leap off the bed and hug him so hard neither of them would be able to breathe. Another part of him wanted to dive out the nearest window to avoid this - whatever 'this' was.

"No, I guess we're not." 

He took his hand off the gun, because among the many other unique things about Phil Coulson, he was the one person in the world that Clint trusted unreservedly. It said something about how weird Clint's life was that Clint had started to trust him because Phil could sneak up on him, rather than in spite of it...  
 _  
Clint, pressed next to a chimney on a roof, staring down at the street below, felt a touch on his back and whirled, fast and deadly. But part of his brain was screaming 'Friendly' at him, so he didn't break Phil Coulson's neck, or his arm, which he now had in a lock._

_Coulson, to his credit, wasn't showing any sign of pain, and had managed to draw his sidearm with his off hand and press the muzzle to Clint's jaw._

_"Coulson I really hate it when people come at me from behind. And I especially hate it when anyone touches my back. And I think you're the first person to have survived doing both when I didn't know someone was there."_

_"I thought you heard me."_

_"I didn't."_

_"I'll signal first next time."_

_"Good plan."_

_Clint released Coulson and he put his gun away, then smoothed the fabric of his suit jacket, and they both went back to looking at the street below._

_After a minute, Phil said "Sorry," very quietly, and it was the last word either of them ever said about it._

_After that, though, Clint noticed that Phil never stood behind him, if he could help it. If Phil needed to touch him, he was careful to always touch him on the arm, leg, or chest. In the next five years, Phil had never again touched his back. And he always made a point of making some sort of noise when approaching - nothing as obvious as clearing his throat or coughing, but there would be a slight scrape of shoe against gravel or a whisper of fabric or the very faint creak of leather as Phil rolled his shoulders to set his holster more comfortably. And that was part of what had earned Clint's trust - the fact that he was willing to do those things for Clint, without comment or reason, without any explanation as to why they were necessary, but just because that was what Clint needed from him._  
  
The sound that had woken him had been the familiar faint creak of leather, Clint suddenly realized. Phil had signaled his presence, just like he always did, and Clint felt himself relax another fraction.

"You know, I was kind of hoping you'd actually be happy to see me." God, Phil sounded tired. 

Happy? Clint was fucking ecstatic. Phil wasn't dead. Phil was standing in his hotel room in Jakarta, having (somehow, but this was Phil) tracked Clint down. Clint had run as far and as fast as he could, but hadn't been able to outrun his memories, or his guilt. Or the sick feeling that had clenched his gut when Fury said that Coulson was dead. Dead. Because of him. The feeling hadn't left, and in fact was worse now that he knew Coulson... Phil was standing in the room... 

"Why are you here?"

"Because for the first time in five years I woke up in SHIELD Medical and you weren't in the chair next to my bed. Or in the next bed over, for that matter."

"That's because you were dead."

"When I woke up and you weren't there, I thought you were dead. Or worse, that Loki had somehow taken you over again."

Trust Phil to actually be able to understand that being mind-controlled was far, far worse than being dead.

"You left." Phil sounded hurt.

"You died!" Clint hoped he sounded angry.

"I'm sorry." 

"Me too."

"Why are you here Coulson? Is this a retrieval - have you come to take me back into the fold?" 

Why else could Phil be here? He wasn't dead ('He's not dead! Phil's not dead!' sounded like a gong in the back of Clint's head, making it difficult to think), and so he must be back at work, back to 'normal' whatever the fuck that meant, and had been sent to fetch a wayward archer. Fuck that. Clint didn't want to go back if it meant going back to the way things were...  
 _  
Clint felt the now-familiar tightness in his chest as he watched Coulson tap his way through mission reports and intelligence briefs. For the hundredth time, Clint swore to himself that he'd stop doing this. He'd stop inventing excuses to show up at Phil's office, and flop down on the sofa, and hang out while Phil worked. It had been fine back when they were just good friends. Phil seemed to somehow understand that Clint just needed somewhere to be, somewhere that felt comfortable, and that somewhere was the sofa in Phil's office._

 _But Clint, as usual, had screwed things up. He'd fallen for Phil, hard and fast, head over heels. So now when he stretched out on the sofa, watching Phil while he pretended not to, he was filled with regret for the things that he wanted but could never have, and he'd swear to himself for the hundred and first time that this would be the last._  
  
"This isn't a mission. No one knows I'm here except Romanov, and she doesn't know where I am, just that I'm looking for you. I'm alone, Clint."

Clint finally opened his eyes. He turned his head just enough to look over to where Coulson was standing and carefully controlled his shock at Coulson's appearance. He was wearing a linen suit rather than wool, appropriate for Indonesia in the summer, but Clint had never seen him look so tired, so run down, so thin, so...

"What's wrong with your arm?" he asked sharply, sitting up on the bed so fast that Coulson flinched a little. Clint was staring at the way Coulson's left arm didn't hang quite even from his shoulder, how it seemed a fraction shorter than his right, and a little stiff.

"It's ah... there was some damage to the tendons that turned out to be difficult to repair. It's getting better."

"I don't believe that Natasha let you come looking for me by yourself in that condition." Clint almost reached for his gun again.

"I can shoot with it. Besides I didn't give her much choice."

"That never stopped her before."

"I... convinced her that this was something I had to do myself."

"That would be a first."

"Well, she made me promise to tell you some things."

"What things?"

Coulson didn't answer, looking at the floor instead of at Clint.

"What. Things." Clint's voice was sharp.

"Things I told her to convince her to give me everything she knew that might help me track you down. Things I told her over six hours and two bottles of vodka sitting on the floor in my living room. I had to know that you were OK, Clint, or at least that you were alive." Coulson paused and rubbed a hand over tired eyes, a gesture that Clint had seen more times than he could count. As always, it made him ache for Coulson's pain. "Would it be OK if I came and sat down - I've been awake for almost 30 hours and my stamina's not back up to 100% yet..."

Clint gestured to the other double bed in the room. Clint had picked a high-end Indonesian hotel, which meant that there was enough room to walk around the beds without bashing yourself on any of the other furniture. 'I had to know that you were OK,' Phil had said. That almost sounded like...

Phil sat down and looked at Clint.

"What things did Tasha make you promise to tell me?" Clint wasn't letting go of this.

"It's kind of a long story."

"I've got nowhere special to be today, do you?"

Coulson took a deep breath and started to talk.

"I asked Natasha about you and her. I was pretty sure you weren't still... but I needed to know for sure."

"We figured out that we made better friends than lovers a few years back." Where the fuck was Phil going with this?

"Yeah, that's what she told me. So then I asked her if she thought you could ever be interested in someone like me."

"And what did she say to that?"

"She said, and I quote, 'Someone like you - not in a million years. YOU, on the other hand, he's had the hots for YOU for a couple of years. Idiots - the both of you.' Then she said maybe part of the reason you ran away was that after I died you realized that maybe you felt more... than you thought you did. Was she right?"

Clint wanted to jump up off the bed and wrap his arms around Phil and never, ever let him go. But he was also pissed. Pissed that Coulson hadn't let him know that he had a chance. Pissed that Coulson had played it cool, kept his distance, ignored what must have shown so plainly on Clint's face every time one of them got hurt... 'It was the first time in five years I woke up... and you weren’t there.' But he never did anything about it, never gave Clint the least little indication that he might feel...

"Where exactly is this little game of 'Do you think he likes me the way I like him?' going Phil?"

"I care about you, Clint. Shit, you know that. I... Hell, I'm... I guess I'm halfway in love with you. Have been for a while. I want to know if there's any chance that we could have something together."

Clint wanted to scream "Bullshit!" How the hell was he supposed to know that... Clint played Phil's words back again in his head. Phil was asking if he felt the same way. If they could have something... Phil didn't know. Phil didn't know.... But... if he felt... then... what did he want?

"Under what circumstances?" Clint's voice sounded surprisingly steady, even to himself.

"Excuse me?"

"I mean, do you want us to bum around east Asia together, do you want us to buy a house in Spokane and open an antique shop, do you want us to go back to SHIELD?"

Coulson tried not to let his surprise show on his face. Of all the reactions he'd been prepared for: surprise, shock, dismissal, denial, anger, he hadn't expected Clint to respond with a... contract negotiation.

"I want us to go back to our jobs. I want you to go back to being one of the best assets SHIELD has and I want to be your handler, if Fury will allow it. We're good together in the field - we've been good together from the start - that's a big part of why I think this can work. If it's what you want, of course." Coulson was very conscious of the fact that Clint hadn't yet said anything about what, if anything, he felt.

"You're not worried that if we're fucking it will compromise our integrity when it comes to mission objectives?" Clint had always, always assumed that this was why his dreams were doomed. That Coulson would always put the job, the missions ahead of any personal feelings.

"When you and Natasha were fucking, did it ever compromise your integrity?"

"Hell no! Just thought you might be more of a stickler for the rules."

"SHIELD doesn't have any fraternization rules. They'd just get broken anyway - people who do this kind of work together... let's just say we'd be nowhere near unique..."

Clint nodded slowly.

"Take off your shirt. I want to see what I did to you."

"Christ, Clint - you didn't do anything to me. Loki stuck a spear in my back, believe me, I know, I was there!" 

"Yeah, and he wouldn't have been on the damn Helicarrier in the first place if I hadn't spilled everything I knew into his waiting ears. I want to see what's making you so tired. I want to see what's causing the pain I can hear in your voice..." Clint stopped and then continued more softly, and gently, "Please, Phil, I need to know that I can deal with it." 

Phil nodded slowly, and then awkwardly started to unbutton his shirt one-handed.

"Jesus, Phil, how bad is your arm?"

"It's really not all that bad. I'm tired and I haven't done my physio for a few days, so right now it's worse than it usually is. The doctors think there's a 70% chance that I'll eventually regain all of the mobility. There might always be some weakness though."

"If the doctors knew anything about how hard you work to reach your objectives, they'd put that at 95%, and then only because they hate to say they're 100% sure about anything, ever."

Phil shrugged the shirt off his shoulder and slid his good arm out, and then, awkwardly, his bad arm. Clint forced himself to watch. To see. 

Clint was barely keeping it together. In the past hour he'd gone from just holding on to some semblance of his sanity, spending his days wandering the streets of Jakarta and wondering, in his more lucid moments, how long he could keep it up without losing it entirely, to having practically everything he ever wanted offered to him on a silver platter by the man he'd been pining for for years, and who, incidentally, wasn't really dead. 

Clint spent a long time quietly looking at the scars on Phil's chest. They were still pink and shiny, the skin tight around them. Clint knew what those kind of scars felt like, and he could only imagine the kind of damage that had been painstakingly repaired to bring Phil back. 

Eventually he gave a small nod. There was just one more thing he needed to know before he could accept that this was happening for real.

"Phil, what do you want?" 

"In the future, or right now?"

"Both, but start with the future first."

"I'd like us to go back to SHIELD, go back to our jobs, and live our lives, together, as... as a couple."

"That's it?"

"Yes. I just want to be with you. I thought we could figure out the details as we go along."

Phil Coulson saying that they could 'figure out the details as we go along' told him volumes about how Phil felt, where his head was at, and how much stress he'd been under. Clint decided he could deal with all that later.

"And now?"

"Right now I want to lie next to you on that bed, maybe kiss you a little, and then have you hold me while I fall asleep, so that I can feel safe for the first time since I found out that you were compromised. And then later, we'll see."

"OK."

"'OK' to what part?"

"OK to all of it. OK to us being a couple, OK to going back to SHIELD, assuming they'll have us,"

"They will."

"OK to you coming over here and lying down. Especially OK to the kissing. And I'll hold you for as long as you want, Phil. For days if you want. Forever if you want. Because holding you in my arms and feeling your heartbeat and listening to you breathe sounds like heaven to me right about now."

Phil was as close to tears as Clint had ever seen him, and considering he'd seen him injured and tortured and knelt next to him at the grave of a junior agent killed on her first mission, that scared him more than a little. At least this time, finally, there was something he could do about it. After all this time, Phil Coulson had admitted he needed something, and it turned out that that something was Clint. 

Phil was shaking a little as he moved to push himself up from the edge of the bed he was sitting on, and Clint scooted over to make room, at the same time stripping off his own shirt. Phil gave him a tired smile, kicked off his shoes, and climbed onto the bed. He lay down facing Clint, and put one hand tentatively on his waist.

"Just come here," Clint said, reaching for him and pulling him close and wrapping him in strong arms that felt like finally coming home. For long minutes they just held each other, and Clint was surprised at how comfortable and normal it felt. As if they had been doing this for years, and he realized that in a way, they had. All those times Clint or Phil had sat in Medical, next to the other's bed, a hand resting lightly on an arm, just enough to say, "You're OK, you're not alone, I'm here." Then he felt Phil gently stroking his back with tiny movements of one thumb, as if he wasn't sure he was allowed to do more than simply hold on. There was a tension in his body that Clint wanted to hug out of him, so he whispered,

"It's OK, I've got you. You're safe."

Clint felt Phil smile into his neck, then raise his head.

"It's not that."

"Then what is it?"

"This," Phil said, and kissed him.

And if holding Phil had felt comfortable and familiar, kissing him was completely, shockingly, excitingly new. Phil's lips fitted to his and pressed gently. Clint opened his just a little to accept the pressure, and to encourage it to continue. Phil mirrored his actions and it was... solid. It was an odd way to think of a kiss, but not an odd way to think about Phil Coulson, and the solid strength of the kiss reassured Clint in a way that nothing else up to this point had been able to. The man in his arms, the man whose lips were (solidly) pressed to his, was the Phil Coulson he loved. Then all of a sudden their mouths were open to hot, wet, probing tongues and their hands were in each other's hair and one of them moaned and one of them said, "Oh, God, yes."

After a few minutes they separated, gasping and smiling stupidly at each other. Clint pulled Phil half-way on top on him and held his face in both hands and looked into his eyes,

"I love you Phil. And I think it's only fair to let you know that as far as I'm concerned, this is for keeps. I don't plan on ever letting you go."

Phil smiled a tired, but happy smile, "That sounds good to me." 

He leaned down to kiss Clint softly twice, three times, as if to reassure himself that it was real. Then he laid his head on Clint's shoulder, and wrapped his arms around him.

"Get some sleep," Clint whispered in Phil's ear, holding him tight.

"Yeah. OK." Phil closed his eyes, and relaxed, and slept.

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to my editors/beta-readers: t! and AdamantSteve. 
> 
> Find me on Tumblr at [Queen of Wands](http://jmathieson-fic.tumblr.com/)


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